“I’m the chap who did look after his estates,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have influenced Dudley Leicester against you; I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I never said a word against you in my life; but it’s possible, of course, that my taking up his land business, out of sheer meddlesomeness, may have influenced him against you. Dudley’s got more in him than appears on the surface. Or, at least, he can stick straight in a way if he is put into it, and just about that time Dudley got it into his head that he had a duty to his county and his country, and so on ...”
Etta Stackpole’s fingers moved convulsively.
“Oh, my man,” she said, “what the deuce’s business was it of yours? Why couldn’t you have let him alone?”
“I’m telling you the worst of what I did to you,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I didn’t take Dudley Leicester from you. I’ve never said a word against you, but I probably kept him from coming back to you once he had thrown you over. I don’t mean to say that I did it by persuasions; he was dogged enough not to come back, but I dare say he would have returned to you if he hadn’t had his mind occupied—if I hadn’t occupied his mind with barn-roofs and rents and field-draining, and the healthy sort of things that keep a man off women.”
“Oh, you devil!” Etta Hudson said.
“Who’d have thought you had it in you? Where do you get it from? You look just like any other Park loafer.”
“I suppose,” Robert Grimshaw said speculatively, “it’s because I’m really Greek. My name’s English, and my training’s been English, and I look it, and smell it, and talk it, and dress the part; but underneath I should think I’m really a Dago. You see, I’m much more my mother’s child than my father’s. She was a Lascarides, and that’s a clan name. Belonging to a clan makes you have what no Englishman has—a sense of responsibility. I can’t bear to see chaps of my class—of my clan and my country—going wrong. I’m not preaching; it’s my private preference. I can’t bear it because I can’t bear it. I don’t say that you ought to feel like me. That’s your business.”
“My word!” Etta Hudson said with a bitter irony, “we English are a lost race, then!”
“I never said so,” Robert Grimshaw answered. “I said you were an irresponsible one. You’ve other qualities, but not that one. But that’s why I’ve been a sort of Dutch uncle to numbers of young men of our class. Dudley’s not the only one, but he is the chief of them.”
“And so you took him up, and dry-nursed him, and preached to him ...”